H.G Wells uses the three old caretakers in the red room to create a certain mood of mystery at the beginning of the story. When he introduces the “man with the withered arm” it helps create tension and gives it an eerie quality. The caretakers are also left nameless to add to the mood of the story they are refereed to as inhuman “Human qualities seem to drop from old people insensibly day by day.”
H.G Wells gives his story TRR a time less quality by making the meaning of the story the worse thing to fear is fear it self “the worse of all thing that haunt poor mortal man,’ said I; and that is, in all its nakedness – Fear! …..”
In the TSM Dickens uses something that Victorian people are scared of the railway. The same as people these days with the internet and mobile phones. It is in human nature to be scared of the unknown and the new, this also give this story a timeless quality.
Dickens and H.G Wells both use language to create a mood. An example of this in TRR is the narrator describing the corridor lending to the empty, cold and old feeling “The long draughty subterranean passage was chilly and dusty This is made the repetition of certain word, simile, and metaphors. The alteration in the length of paragraphs short and long. The Number of short paragraphs in a row “
‘Did it cry out?
‘No. it was silent.’
‘Did it wave its arm?’
No it leaned against the shaft of light, with both hands before the face. Like this.’”
Wells use metaphors and similes to create an atmosphere. Like these two “My candle ….left an ocean of mystery beyond its island of light” and “darkness closed upon me like the shutting of an eye. Likewise Dickens also uses light to make an atmosphere “so little sunlight ever found it’s what to this spot, that it had an earthy, deadly smell….’”
The writers in both of the stories create a feeling of a mysterious and unnatural place the narrator’s are going to. In TRR this starts straight away with the introduction of the three caretakers but similarly in the signalman it starts nearly at the beginning “struck chill to me as if I had left the natural world.”’
The time that the story was written had a great influence on both of the stories many more people were exploring places to go and what they could do. And a lot more people had extra money than what they had ever had before, and the middle class was growing because of the industrial revolution. I feel TSM is a story that tries to reflect the 19th century society. As advances in technology came about as did the denial of ghosts. The signalman was never out in sunlight and was “Alienated” from his environment
The end of both stories leave you wondering about what fear can do to a person they both after no solution which makes them true mystery stories. I do prefer TSM because I found it engaged the reader more as you go on a journey with the narrator. It had a more compelling storyline and felt the foundation of the story was more original then TRR
